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You will not find creative schematics, acrobatic soldering, custom BIOSes or anything like that: this is pure "just works eGPU" with Win10 bootcamp and an external display (so, no OSX support and no internal monitor either)

Let's begin!

Hardware:

- Macbook Pro Retina Mid 2014 with nVidia GT750M

- Akitio Thunder2

- MSI GTX 1070 Armor 8G OC

- Dell DA-2 12V (ended up not using it)

- Old Corsair 540W Modular PSU

Setup:

None. Absolutely no software setup. I had my previously working Win10 bootcamp machine installed, and it was a regular, apple-certified, Win10 installation done via bootcamp assistant, so no UEFI workaround or custom BIOS.

The works

Got my Akitio, unbox and open. Just 2 screws and voila.

Removed the back plate (4 little screws)

I unplugged both the fan and the led cable and removed the glued support for the cable, you can still see the glue

Removing the fan was just a matter of removing 4 screws, the LED light took just a bit of force and it popped out of the socket.
Here's all the things from the Akitio you will not use.

As you can see from the hardware list, I decided to go with a full sized GTX card, and not just a full-sized one, a pretty big one at that.

The MSI GTX1070 Armor OC does not have any LEDs or fancy things, just 2 big (and quiet) fans and that's that.

So, of course, I had to bend the Akitio to make room for the card.

I went with the "jeweller's screwdriver" technique. Fast and easy: just put a little flat screwdriver near the soldering at the bottom of the enclosure and work your way in lightly with a hammer.

Took me 1 minute and the little solderings popped open.

Now it was just a matter of applying a bit of brute force and bend the enclosure open.
Not pretty, I know... but I'm not looking for pretty. Besides, the card is so long it covers the bent enclosure and then some!

I gotta say, I was getting pretty impatient at this point.

I put the card in, adjusted the two screws to set it in place and checked the spacing between the card and the bent enclosure.
Everything was in order. Not pretty, again, but in order.

At this point, I encountered a little snafu in my plan.
I had bought the famous Dell DA-2 to power my GPU.. turns out this monster of a card has an 8 pin power slot, not a 6 pin one.

Huh. Now what?
Remember, this was supposed to be a hassle-free installation, no soldering or complicated workarounds.

I remembered I had an oldish PSU from my desktop era sitting in a closed, took it out, plugged it in and got a nice 8-pin cable to power my GPU.

(of course I had to use the paperclip-trick to power the PSU, but it's so basic, I'm not counting that as a hassle).

To power the Akitio, since this a... let's say it again, everyone... hassle free build, I didn't want to use any custom made barrels or anything, so I used the original PSU, plugged it in and that's it.

Hello, I need help trying to put my setup to work. I recently purchased an Akitio Thunder 2 with a GTX 1050 ti Superclocked to implement it as an eGPU for my system. I have a Macbook Pro 15” mid 2012. I’m not interested in using it with OS X (I’ve read that there is not much support by Apple for Nvidia cards Series 10). My main goal is to use it using Windows 8.1. I had some trouble with the initial connection as Windows recognized the external card but it gave me error code 12. I already got rid of the error 12 problem. The situation now is that I connected a second display through the HDMI port of the eGPU and activated it using the Nvidia Control Panel. After a restart I choose to boot windows 8.1 again but the two displays get hanged with black screens and I only see the cursor. Anybody has had this problem and was able to fix it?

I did some further testing, decided to boot up with the eGPU connected but without the HDMI cable plugged. I was able to log in to Windows and the eGPU got recognized in device manager, but then I connected the HDMI cable and for one second I saw my Macbook screen displayed in the external monitor, then both screens hanged again with black screens only showing the cursor. I’m exhausted of experimenting and seeing no positive results...

My goal is to be able to use the eGPU with the internal monitor of the Macbook (if that is possible with my system). If not, I would like to know how I can set it to work with a second display. I will be very grateful if somebody can help me... Sorry for the long post.

I have a MSI 16F4 with a 970m GTX and an i7 4800MQ. I get around 80C on my GPU and CPU if I play a game like Darksiders Warmastered, but 90C on my CPU if I play a CPU heavy game like Dota 2.

So I applied some thermal grizzly conductonaut liquid metal paste on my CPU and GPU about 2 months ago. After I applied it, I noticed that there weren't any changes in the termperature, so I applied a little more paste again and still noticed no changes. I decided to let it be and give it time to settle in. 2 months later, still the same.

Well, last week I thought I'd have another look at it, so I opened it up and sure enough the paste was still liquid and not dried up. I added a tiny droplet more just in case, and yet again I see NO CHANGES in temperatures. I'm fairly sure the paste has been applied correctly, as I've had a look at how several other people have done it on youtube.

Can someone help me with why my CPU is heating up so much? The vents are clean, my laptop is dustless. Sure, I turn up the turbo boost on the fan, but that's just so noisy.